Beat the Clock
by mariteri
Summary: What is supposed to be a simple interrogation gets complicated very quickly. Rated T.


**I do not own The Blacklist, Harry Potter, or any of its characters. Nor do I make any money from the posting of this fanfiction.**

**Hello, one and all! Here it is a sequel to the first Blacklist/Harry Potter crossover. Hope that you like it. Please read and review!**

**…**

**Beat the Clock**

Dr. Hermione Granger, woman of mystery, was sitting in interrogation lazily playing with the cellular phone she had come in with. She had called it her mobile, but she had yet to make a call or text to anyone, not even Red. No, instead she sat there, playing games—Elizabeth had no idea what—and looked up now and again. The most she had said was asking to use the loo, but that had been well over an hour before.

Cooper, Ressler, and Keen all watched from the observation window.

"Who does she work for?" Cooper asked them.

"We don't know, sir," Ressler answered. "But she leads a very slick, professional team. They took out five of seven snipers at the meeting with Red. Most of whom we didn't even know where there at all."

"They don't work for MI6," Elizabeth said. "She laughed at the notion."

"Could be that she works for a private security firm or organization," Ressler pointed out to her. "We've run across that before."

"True, but I get the feeling she works for an organization—one larger than just a firm or private security firm," Elizabeth murmured. "And I know hunches don't amount to much, but it's there in the way she operates if nothing else."

Cooper nodded and said, "Get in there and question her, Agent Keen. See what you can find out about her, who she works for, and her connection to Reddington."

"Yes, sir," she murmured and went into the interrogation room.

…

Hermione's eyes flicked up from her game when Agent Elizabeth Keen walked into the room. She absently looked at the time on her phone. Three hours! Merlin, but it had taken her long enough to get her arse in there.

"Dr. Granger," she said.

"Agent Keen," she murmured back, her voice soft and empty of inflection. "Are you here to explain the charges against me?"

"You are a material witness."

"Really? And what is it that I supposedly witnessed, Agent Keen?" she drawled.

"That's not important," she told her. "What is very important is who you work for."

Hermione lowered the phone and just stared at her a moment. A small smile twisted her lips, as she said, "Oh Agent Keen." She shook her head. "Of course it matters. It's like saying gravity doesn't matter after dropping a ball to see it bounce."

Liz's face went a bit pink at her words.

"Twisting the law to suit you might be looked upon as something accepted, but it still doesn't make it lawful," she told her. "Do you have a material witness warrant? If so, it is my right to see it."

"No, until we establish whom you work for, it is taken that you are an unknown and could possibly pose a threat to the public and thus we don't need one," Elizabeth told her.

"Bravo, Agent Keen," she said dryly. "Pulling out the gem of the Homeland Securities Act." Hermione leaned on her hands and said dryly, "Why I never would have thought of that one at all." Her mobile phone rang, making her look to see who was calling her. "Pardon, but I must answer this." She pressed the screen and murmured, "Azkaban Bakery, may I take your order?"

There was a growl followed by, "Who?"

"The FBI," Hermione answered. "They wish to know whom I work for."

There was a snort. "Threats?"

"Death by boredom," she muttered.

That gained a chuckle from the man. "If you need me…"

"I'll phone," she replied and they both hung up together. Hermione looked over to Elizabeth. "That was my husband. I wager he'll be contacting Red next to find out what this is about. Reasonable, under the circumstances. Pity will be that he'll have no answers and thus this will worry my husband." She pursed her lips. "Trust me, you don't want my husband to worry. He's temper can be very…explosive." She set the timer on her phone. "You have ten minutes to guess whom I work for. If you guess correctly, bravo for you. I'll admit it and we can go on as if this little mistake never happened."

"And if I don't guess correctly?" Liz asked her.

Hermione grinned. "Why, I vanish without anyone here being the wiser as to how." She held up her hand. "But if you guess wrong, it comes with penalties attached naturally."

"Right," she said, sounding as if she were tired of the game already.

"Really, Agent Keen, if you insist on pulling people in for no reason whatsoever because you have a bee in your proverbial bonnet about who or what they may work towards, then expect the games. But get it straight—I wasn't the one to start this one, you were," Hermione said, clearly irritated at the other woman's attitude. "You have no legitimate reason for me to be here and curiosity only gets you so far. You don't trust Red and I pay the price, is that it?"

Liz blinked at her in shock. "I-I…"

"I don't want to hear it." Anger was bristling ripe in her tones. "But will say this much, Agent Keen. Sooner or later you are going to have to decide which side you are going to align yourself with. The devil you know or the one you don't." She leaned forward slightly, "Just a hint, the second one isn't Red." She looked at the timer. "You're wasting time, Agent Keen. Tick-tock!"

"British Intelligence!" she answered, feeling pressured to do so.

"Wrong." Hermione reached over to the wall, moving her hand to the right and lifted it. She punched the same spot and all the lights in the entire building went out. "Try again, Agent Keen."

"What did you do?!" she demanded.

"There's only five minutes and counting," the British woman told her. "You shouldn't waste the time you have left on stupid questions."

"How did you turn out the lights?!" Elizabeth ordered her to tell her.

"You must do your best to control your panic," the other woman said. "You're allowing your fear to make your judgments for you. That's not wise at all." She turned on the flashlight app on her phone, setting it in the middle of the table. "Better? I would have thought agents of the FBI wouldn't let the lack of light get to them." She sighed. "I was wrong." She looked at the time remaining. "Aww, yes, three minutes left, Agent Keen. Do you have another guess for me?"

"Why? What will you do then if I'm wrong?"

Hermione laughed. "I can't very well tell you."

"Then I'm not guessing," Liz said stubbornly.

"That way only guarantees failure," she said, sounding disappointed. "I will tell you this much—and it's only a snippet of information. When I leave, when you look over to where I should be and you can see that I'm really gone, the only one in this entire building that will remember me being here will be you."

Elizabeth blinked at her in shock. "How?"

She only smiled. "Honestly, Agent Keen, I seriously doubt Red is so lackadaisical as to give you all the answers. He's never done so with me. Why then do you expect it from anyone that deals with him?" She leaned back. "That's silliness."

"Oxford University!"

A scream went up that the computers just crashed.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Needless to say, you got that wrong."

"How are you doing that?!" she yelled.

"Shhh, Agent Keen, the fear is your enemy, not I," she murmured. "One minute left…"

"I'm not guessing!"

"Pity," she replied, pulling her phone off of the table and turning off the flashlight app. "I need to save the battery. You understand. These things just suck up the energy as if it's an infant. My husband calls my phone my baby because of that…"

"NSA!" Elizabeth guessed, only to have a scream go up that the surveillance went out.

"Wrong." There was silence now followed by an alarm chirping on Hermione's cell phone. "And you're out of time. Goodbye, Agent Keen."

There was a loud crack followed by the lights, which had been dead, coming back on. Liz blinked at the brightness in the room to find that she was there alone. What the hell!

Ressler came into the room. "What are you doing in here?" He just looked at her puzzled. He shook his head and told her, "Doesn't matter. We have a new lead on the new Blacklister that Red gave us yesterday. Come on! We're going to New Orleans."

"But…"

"No time!" he snapped. "Let's roll!"

Left with no other option, Liz grabbed her things from her desk and was out the door.

…

"What were you thinking?" were Red's first words to her in New Orleans.

She blinked at him, sitting down across from her at the table she was sitting at. He looked…pissed.

"Why in the name of all that's holy did you pull in Dr. Hermione Granger as a material witness?" he demanded.

"We need to know…"

"No, you don't," he snapped. "And because it wasn't need to know it nearly cost not only you but all of us, Liz."

She blanched but said nothing, as he went on.

"Your little temper tantrum nearly cost you your job," he told her. "There would have been nothing I could have said or done to have stopped it either…" He held up his hand to stop her words, as he went on with, "Not because of her getting you fired, but because she would have destroyed the department legally." He leaned forward slightly. "And she would have been within her rights."

"I did not have a temper tantrum," she told him tightly.

"Really? What else would you call pulling in a person under a bogus material witness warrant to press her into telling you what agency she works for?" He paused waiting for her to answer him. "No answer?"

"Who is she to you?" Liz asked him. "Who does she work for? Why is it that she could do what she did?"

"What exactly did she do?" he inquired of her. "You have no footage of whatever it is, nor do you have any witnesses other than you."

Her face went ruddy at those words. "How was she able to do that?"

"Do what? You have no proof she was there at all," he repeated. "Remember?"

Her lips went flat at those words.

"You know what I don't get, Lizzie? I can bend over backwards for you. I could juggle things so that you get what you need for any of on that list and you still don't trust me. If Tom should suddenly make a reappearance into your life, you'd still trust anything he'd say."

"No! Not just anything…" her voice faded and died with that last word.

"Not just anything," he repeated, making her go mute with those words. He looked at her flatly. "You don't trust me. Fine. I can accept that. I don't like this, but I accept it. I've been a felon too long to take such personally." He stood up taking up his hat. "There's only a fair few people on this planet we call home that I can say I absolutely trust with my life. Dr. Hermione Granger is one of them. Keep her out of interrogation or whomever we're working on at that time will be the last on the Blacklist you ever know about."

Putting on his hat, he turned heel and left. Shocked she got to her feet, and snapped, "You don't mean that!"

"Try it again and see where it gets you," he told her. "Sample the coffee here! It's excellent. Until later, Lizzie!"

Sitting down hard, Elizabeth wondered how it could have gone so wrong.

**The end**

**…**

**I hope you guys liked it. Thanks for reading and I hope you take the time to review. It is after all the only form of payment I get for posting these! Thanks and have a magnificent day!**


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